# Copperhead (spoilers, with luck)

*The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 04 May 2001*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2621>

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### Spectacled Bear
*04 May 2001, 17:53*

> At 18:15 2001-05-04, Blattid wrote:
> My first reaction to "Copperhead" was roughly equivalent to my first 
> reaction to several other Lupine shorts, notably the ever-present 
> "Suzanne Delage": "Huh?" 
> 
> I'm not ashamed to say that I Don't Get It, and (unusual for me with 
> Wolfe) I'm not at all convinced that "it"'s there _to_ get. there's  
> bunch of stuff at the beginning that isn't followed up at all; I have 
> no idea why the woman with the strange voice from another dimension 
> behaves as she does; and the ending vaguely-out-of-Genesis simply 
> doesn't follow from the story in any way I can perceive. 

The Changer swaps things with cognates, i.e. rough equivalents.
The thing moving under the leaves is surely a Copperhead snake,
which has been swapped with a Serpent from another universe.
That also accounts for the identity of the man swapped for the
president - supreme leader, big boss - at the end, and of course
he's annoyed.

Things that confused me:

1. Are Boone and General Martens the same person?

2. Who gets murdered and why?

3. The dialect gets impenetrable at the worst possible moment
   - what do "groose" and "grawnt" mean?

Spectacled Bear.

> I suspect 
> the whole thing of being to some extent a venting of spleen at 
> Wm Jefferson Clinton, who doubtless has it coming, but would probably
> not have a clue that spleen had been vented at him.
> 
> --Dan'l
> 
> 
> *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

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